


isn't it midnight (on the other side of the world)

by simplymellifluous



Category: Video Blogging RPF, oneyplays, sleepycabin
Genre: Drifting Apart, Flashbacks, Fleetwood Mac-adjacent, Friends to Lovers, Inner Dialogue, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Memories, Mick is a Therapist, Newgrounds, Secret Crush, Sleepycabin - Freeform, Slow Burn, Too Many Emails and Messages, Zach Constantly Sleeps, big ass analogy that takes too long to write, bitch, historical fiction - Freeform, long distance...relationship? we'll see, oneyplays - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28230759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplymellifluous/pseuds/simplymellifluous
Summary: "No, man. Go back to your roots. Look at those little, starting texts you had with him. I’m sure they’re fucking terrible and cringe and disgusting. That’s where you find how close you really are. That’s your collective... existence, the weirdness that brought you together."Mick senses Zach’s interest, "Just try it. Scan your Newgrounds account. Sure you’ll find some weird shit." Zach hangs up the phone hastily, not wasting a second of analytical solitude and deliberation inside himself.---Zach Hadel takes this advice a bit far and learns a little too much about himself, Chris, and the ties that bind them.((aka a heartfelt oneypebbles fic that is my struggling attempt at a slow burn))
Relationships: Zach Hadel/Chris O'Neill
Comments: 17
Kudos: 18





	1. give them an inch

Zach’s jaw is incredibly slack staring at the picture. It’s 240p, ancient, and terrifying: a candid shot of him at age seventeen in a Goku costume, for what he can only hope was for a Halloween party and not his own pleasure. He’s posing, dressed in an orange sweatshirt that seems three sizes too big, baggy black sweatpants with...pieces of orange construction paper taped on...and his hair is slicked up into jagged tendrils in some form of quasi-serious mockery. 

He physically cannot find the skill to laugh at the image for a few minutes. He sits in silence calculating when he took the picture (2007), where in his room (next to the window to the left of his old bed), mouth still agape at the situation. _Who the fuck...wh-...what…._ And then, once he’s done counting how many glorious arcs of thin, over-grown hair he manufactured with too much hair gell, he cackles. It’s an earth-shattering, neighbor-complaining noise, and he leans over his computer chair sideways to catch his breath.

_Look at the pants!!_

The box holding such relics arrived quicker than he expected, and messier than he expected. Tape folded at weird angles, Amazon box covered with its old stickers, he could only assume his mom wanted this heathen shit out of her house as soon as possible. It was heavy, had something shifting weight inside. Zach scooted a few loose letters and papers off of his kitchen counter and placed it down with an excited amount of care. Reading the address, a hint of nostalgia spurned him to grab his kitchen scissors and split through the tape.

Inside, it contained a card from Joann’s Fabrics followed by at least forty pounds of pastel tissue paper. _The sweet comfort of Nebraska mom-core,_ he thought, opening a flowery card in immaculate cursive.

**Dear Zach,**

**Here are some of your things. So many cords! I found nearly everything because you stuffed it all in one corner of the garage! Silly you ;). Me and Jim are doing well, and I hope you are too. I know you’re busy recently, but send me a call. Let’s talk! Love you so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so much my baby boy!**

**Love, Mom**

He blushed at the saccharine emotion behind each loopy letter, the warmth of ‘baby boy’ even though it hasn’t applied in the last 23 years. It felt like getting a hug, and in that comfy high, he read it through a few more times. However, his brain got sidetracked when his hand rifled through the tissue paper, hitting something metallic. And rifling again, touched something heavier. Zach sped into his bedroom.

Everything was briskly slid off of the side of his desk when he found out what was inside. His bedroom right now is a hurricane, the way cups, papers, and wires sit discarded on the floor. In any other world, Zach would consider this a hell-like situation, and he’d immediately pull out a trash bag and go to work; yet his mind wanders elsewhere, on the box on the floor next to him and its terrifying, lovely contents. He clicks through the old Dell computer gently, cautiously. And the tiny little clicks, and stray embarrassed giggles at these archaic pictures, fill in the room’s current silence.

Zach was at Chris’ place three days prior, blankly staring at a screen presenting a Steam horror game. The menu design is simple, mostly boring. Zach fantasizes about what he’d fix about it: add highlights to the corners, change up the color palette. Those daydreams meander along as Chris frustratedly tries to connect the microphones to the recording software. The software that somehow has prevented Chris from talking to Zach at all this fine morning. The software that has made Lyle jumpstart his comedy career.

“Chris, maybe we can just film the episode on my phone,” Lyle starts, his voice booming even though Chris is two feet away, “Zach can hold it since he’s in the middle, and then he can whip the camera around to whoever’s talking for a facecam.” He leans back into the couch, proud of his cleverness. Zach probably should’ve laughed and joined in, but he sits plain. He’s too bored, too sleepy for Lyle’s jokes. He keeps his eyes trained forward and cracks an unfocused smirk. _Chris, talk, Chris, talk, Chris, talk._

“Yeah, great idea Lyle,” Chris replies to fill in the silence. Zach nods along. A beat passes through the room. Chris’s couch is polyester-y on his fingertips, grey and dull. He remembers falling asleep on it a year ago, that damned stiffness near the arms of the brick-like furniture. He had to ask Chris for maybe three pillows to avoid permanently dislocating his neck. An intrusive thought in his head wants him to lay down and fall asleep, for old times’ sake, of course.

“Jesus Christ, is there a gas leak in this house? Zach, you in today, buddy?” Lyle places a hand on Zach’s upper back which only exacerbates whatever sort of hatred he was developing for Lyle. Chris laughs at _that_ joke. The joke making fun of him. He seethes.

The truth is that Zach doesn’t _hate_ Lyle. He likes Lyle. Lyle is cool. Lyle is a guitar _master_ . Lyle has cool (gay) tattoos. Lyle makes people laugh. Lyle makes Chris and Tomar laugh _a lot_. Lyle=cool guy. But it, inexplicably, boils Zach’s blood when he tries to play the clown or shouts out at 10 AM when everyone else in the room stepped out of bed three minutes ago, or does that stupid fucking leaning-back thing to flex his body. 

Okay. So there’s some level of resentment there that exists. But it isn’t personal to Lyle because he doesn’t care when Lyle’s talking to Tomar, and it doesn’t make sense. Zach finds that to be the least logical idea ever. He wishes there was more logic to friendships, that every feeling could be hosted in a simple dialogue of “hey I want to be your friend”, “hey I don’t want to be your friend”, or “hey I would like to be married to you.” Wouldn’t the world be simpler? It rests as only a fantasy in the back of his head.

It also doesn’t help that he’s been running on four hours of sleep for the past two months. Michael Cusack, his gorgeous Australian partner in crime/partner in the show they’re desperately trying to fly, recently convinced Zach that Smiling Friends needs about four more episodes to be lined up before they can submit it to studios. He was right and it’s fun to build out this Smiling World, but the two of them got over storyboarding _very_ fast. 

Zach can’t call him at normal Pacific times of the day either, 5 PM to 5 AM-ish only works with their time zones, and the Circadian rhythm in Zach’s body has completely disappeared. Dissolved. He eats dinner at 3 AM sometimes, cold and quiet stillness meeting his 7/11 snack as he turns on another Seinfeld rerun while the stars hide behind smog.

“Sorry, just feeling,” he selects a word carefully, “a little...prostrate.”

Lyle makes a face and responds, “What?” followed by a snort from Chris.

“What?” Zach’s head turns to Chris with an equally confused expression, “Prostrate.”

“A prostate is like…your ass..thing.” Chris realizes he’s distracted from fixing the mics and turns away from the conversation. Lyle points at Chris in agreement.

“I’m not talking about a _prostate._ Prostrate is like... like a prostrate plant or flower? It’s ...worn?”

Lyle places another goddamn hand on his shoulder, “Is someone _wearing_ you, Buffalo-Bill style?” Zach rips his hand away and actually snorts, head tilted downwards. Chris glances over. The room shares one sharp laugh, and then silence echoes through again. Zach hates this. He hates everything about it.

Friendship is weird. It can be convoluted and bitter and silent and back-stabby and scary and odd. He’s known this from movies and games and history books, yet it feels so much more confusing when it’s personal, the knife of turmoil straight from his closest friend. Chris is happy right now. He’s getting his amazing game Bowlbo done like he always wanted to. He has a girlfriend, a nice apartment, and a cute dog. They’re _both_ happy, and they’re both doing much better than they were five years ago on the cold floor of a Pennsylvanian flat. _So why does it feel worse like this? Why silence?_

They hear a click, and Chris lets out a mini-shriek of victory. After twenty minutes of fiddling, the microphone is connected and they can now record the let’s play they all dreamed of doing when they were ten-years-old. _Yipee,_ he thinks as Chris turns on his laptop and begins recording. Zach wants to test out a joke to make sure Chris isn’t just ignoring him today, and quietly sniffles over the pros and cons of making an attempt.

“Hey everybody, today we’re playing...Sleep Halloween.”

“Truly one of the best games of our time, I’d say,” Zach mentions, and Chris chuckles! In that weird, fake, theatrical way. _Motherfucker._ He wants to scream out to Chris, to immediately find out what the hell he’s thinking right now. Lyle starts a story about this one time when he met a gay man on a subway. _CHRIS. DO YOU FIND THIS STORY AS BORING AS I DO?_ How did it get so hard to speak? To talk to a best friend?

It’s not like something switched off, some big change. Nothing did. Nothing is different. They’re both just a bit older, just a bit heavier, just a bit more annoyed, just a bit less smiley, but that’s nothing astronomically different from the people they were two years ago. _Everybody morphs into fake personalities when the microphones click_ , he wants to tell himself. _He’s just as tired as you are._ But it doesn’t fit into the grand scheme of their friendship. Do friends just dissolve like this? 

One day, you and your closest friend are laughing until you snort, and walking weird in public just to replicate that glorious laugh from the other, and then the next day, you can snip that noise out of them from a joke or a voice so unqualified, so fucking boring that it makes your stomach sick? That’s what friendship is all about? Zach hates this. It makes him feel like they’re alien to each other, odd prototypes for the supposed, the “real” Chris and Zach. The _Hellbenders._ Friends _forever._

Zach realizes a few stray I-haven’t-slept-in-20-hours tears have leaked out and raises a hand to wipe them. “Damn Zach, I didn’t know these graphics meant so much to you!” Lyle jokes. He wants to go home. 

He lulls and tries to tighten his voice, “Haha, yeah...it’s all just too many polygons for me, I didn’t know life could be this _gorgeous_.” And everyone passes smiles, too light to mean anything, and drops it in three seconds. A factory line of reactions. Zach’s thigh accidentally touches Chris’ but neither move. He wishes he was home right now because he would really prefer to be left alone with his obtrusively depressing thoughts, not knee-to-knee with them. Chris, however, perks up.

“Zach,” he almost forgot how Chris pronounces his name, the Z is nearly a S, “do you remember that one game that you sent me a while back? The protagonist looked exactly like this dude.”

“I’ve sent you a lot of games,” Chris sucks his teeth because he _needs_ to find out what game this is.

“No, no no...maybe...it was definitely a Newgrounds game. And I think you sent it to me like, ON Newgrounds.”

“Oh. So this is _while back_ while back?”

“Yeah.” 

“Um,” As he tries to turn his memories back to that time, something in him struggles. He suddenly notices he can’t even remember the Newgrounds messaging system, something about PMs and...orange buttons. Twenty seconds of dead air pass and he jolts with, “was it a pirate game?”

Chris explodes with joy. “YES! Yeah, it was this pirate dude, and he had a parrot friend, and the enemies were--”

“--were those skeletons.” Zach beams at the memory of screaming over Skype about those fucking skeletons. Their hitboxes were nonexistent. The two share an uncharacteristically warm laugh, and Lyle prods at Chris for more information about this enchanting game. Zach prods at his own thoughts.

_You’re definitely in a bad mood._ He’s just overreacting. _Because listen to how he spoke to you! You’re still friends with him! It’s alright!_ Then he glances it over again. Why did it take memories from ten years back to get them to speak to each other? _Maybe we were closer back then than we are now._

“So the pirate had a convoluted backstory, and it was like half of the game because you had to wait through a,” Chris laughs, “a feature-length film of an intro to start the fuckin’ game.”

“Yeah, but it was such a beautiful intro! I was fighting back tears when his wife died.” 

“That intro was shit, dude.”

“No it wasn’t!! Did you even _watch_ the part when he lost his mast?” Zach argues, Chris smiling but shaking his head. Passive.

There’s something bitter in it all. The way he’s known him forever and yet feels like they’ve known each other for a quick five minutes. It’s exactly like how they were when they first met over Newgrounds: teenage awkwardness, the Transatlantic gap between, the constant fight to stay up late, to work instead of chumming with some rando on the Internet. Somehow it was far simpler to type little sweet nothings on Skype, or bring up funny dreams when they lived together, instead of this odd aging-guessing game. They’re knee-to-knee but Zach drowns in the distance between them.

Yet, when Lyle falls back into a story neither of them are listening to, they smoothly meet each other’s sarcastic, hooded eyes. There’s no eruption of laughter, nor some snide comment from one of them. It’s quiet, and warm, and comfortable. They leave when Lyle screams about one of the game’s enemies approaching Chris. 

Maybe he’s generalizing. He’s crazy. He idolizes neurotic weirdos, so maybe he is one. And he’s _definitely_ moody right now, because how can any man operate on so little sleep? Zach holds on tight to that pirate game, the small glow in Chris’ eyes. Hopping back in with a new fervor, Zach leans a bit closer into the mics and starts _his_ comedy routine; he begins by identifying a tiny polygonal rat (or hamster, he couldn’t tell) as a “precious little character.”

Fifteen episodes get recorded much faster when Zach participates, and soon they all stand up and stretch their old lady backs. It’s charming how they organize --- Lyle always heads to the kitchen to make sure Chris isn’t hiding any stray BBQ chips away from him ---- Chris leans forward into whatever technology he has on deck (his phone, and commonly a video of monkeys or stupid babies) ---- and Zach perennially has to use the restroom, always trying to make some joke to compensate for a small bladder.

This time, Zach clicks his heels together and sprints wildly into Chris’s bathroom. It’s a little cold even though Chris always prefers a warm toilet seat. Green and blue and white details. It has succulents hung on useless shelves that inspire a need to look at Pinterest one more time. The little towels are fuzzy, aesthetically pleasing yet unpleasant on wet hands. And as Zach pisses, he peers a bit further into one of the prints hanging above the toliet. It reads:

**LIVE** as if no one is watching

**SING** as if no one can hear

**LOVE** like you have never been hurt

**DANCE** as if no one is watching

**LAUGH** like no one is listening

_Chris doesn’t dance,_ he first thinks. He reads it three times hoping that the meaning is somehow distorted and truly some elaborate joke. It’s not. And it’s not ironic, because who is paying upwards of fifteen dollars to give your friends a humorous exhale? He nearly blames this decorating decision on Veronica, but then realizes that even she would not take the extra step to get in amaranth, a color that doesn’t work with the scheme of the bathroom.

So what is this? Is _this_ the genesis of...Neo-Chris? The motherfucker he has been speaking to for years has been a closet-Live Laugh Lover? This piece of shit is something he considered worthy to place above his commode? This wall art reflects the ideas of the Chris _he_ knows? Chris doesn’t even dance!

He finds it only a little funny how much he extrapolates from one dumb wall piece, but he’s still pissed. Chris has changed. Chris is a new person, with newer jokes, and new friends, and new pieces of art that display Chris’s new values. Maybe his analysis was right all along, and that initiates a whole other feeling of desolateness. Zach scrubs his hands too harshly with the tiny bar of soap. 

The conversation he walks back into is fresh and humming. Lyle’s on about yet another strange encounter, some old guy who was carrying vegetables, “The bag was _hanging open,_ and he walked past thirty people and _no one_ mentioned a thing. What did he think was gonna happen if the bag was vertical?”

“If you walked past him too, aren’t you just a bystander to this guy’s struggle?” Zach butts in, taking a mighty fist of the chips Lyle located.

“Well, he didn’t ask me for help.”

“Ohh. So if Old Mr. Whole Foods like, addressed you by name, _that_ would’ve caught your attention.”

“Oh my god, are you GuitarMasterX7? Lyle McDouchebag himself?!” adds Chris. Lyle cringes at the mere sound of his old username.

Zach takes this as a slight push to change the topic. He’s curious now. “What the fuck were people even thinking when they made up their usernames? Like, Oney makes sense because O-ney is abbreviated for O-nision, but why...why were you such a master, Lyle?”

Lyle laughs. “I just looked around my room one day and thought ‘wow I do guitar good, time to spend hours watching sexy Tom Fulp compilations.’”

“No fifteen year old ever had a competent thought on that website, I think. Just a bunch of weird-ass kids in the right place and time drawing Dragon Ball Z and porn.” Chris glances over at Zach, “where did Psychicpebbles come from? Or psychicpebble. Whatever.”

He thinks about it, drawing over each word, trying to pluck out where he even heard the word ‘psychic.’ “I’ve always liked the word pebbles, I guess. I don’t know, I never made it to become like, a _brand._ ” And as the conversation continues about the warmth of being a middle schooler on Newgrounds, and Chris begins to wave off his friends with ‘we have enough recording for this week’, Zach sticks to that idea. Why _is_ his fucking name Psychicpebbles? What inspired it? What cosmic combination of friendship or humor or pop culture forced him into such a strange idea?

He’s still pondering it when he drives home. L.A. traffic always leaves a man at least twenty minutes of excess thinking time, a trait that probably coddles its creative industry, and Zach uses this to canvas over his playlists. He’s picky with which Spotify playlist is right for the day. Queen’s his favorite band, but it’s also everyone’s favorite band; realizing this has made him sometimes meek to play _Killer Queen_.

In music, Zach needs to keep some sort of possession over it, some hipstery “I knew it before it was mainstream” feeling to validate and indulge himself. He selects _I Don’t Wanna Know_ by Fleetwood Mac---he wants to feel sad after the dryness of the afternoon, but in the badass Stevie Nicks way where he makes masterpieces out of it. 

Instead of making masterpieces when he goes home, he scatters his sneakers across his apartment and takes a nap. He wakes up two hours later, resenting the nap entirely. He turns on the news, and then turns off the news, and grabs a snack, and turns on some cooking channel show to feel like he’s being comforted _and_ learning. He does all of these little tasks, even laying his Cintiq across his lap if he’s sparked with artistic enlightenment, yet a bad feeling pokes at him incessantly. It’s the type of anxious, remorseful emotion that feels like a cannonball sits inside his stomach, pushing him down. 

He can’t point to what it is, or maybe he doesn’t want to. Of course this feeling is over Chris. It always is. It’s _been_ over Chris for the last decade. _I’m just sensitive now,_ he thinks. _I need to focus on my own shit. Be a #girlboss._ But he doesn’t. And the next half-hour he wastes on Food Network doesn’t push that cannonball anywhere. 

He’s laying flat on his couch, Cintiq long discarded, scrolling mindlessly up and down through his contact list to telepathically make someone text him. At one point in his life, he’d probably text these people first. No one texts him. He plays around with the “watched pot never boils” idiom by fucking around on Twitter for five minutes, no text. 

He questions himself as a human entity, as a person with arms and legs and a brain that works a million times a second to even inspire conversation with others. The existentialism of his need to talk to another human to balance his horrible mood off of the other ruminates for just a second, but he quickly pushes that idea away to wait yet again for a text. Then, Mick calls.

Zach wants to consider Mick a “good friend”, but their allegiance often blends into best friend territory. They _get_ each other. They actually _like_ each other. Zach’s first meeting with Mick was stilted yet kind, some drinks at Pico Day surrounded by friends; the next time they met, Zach was passed out cold on his hotel bathroom floor, minutes from choking on his own vomit and ridding the world of the fourth Hellbenders episode. 

After this nearly fatal crisis, they became each other’s pick-me-up, their cheerleader: Zach giving far too much legal and emotional advice during Mick’s divorce when he hadn’t dated a girl longer than three years. Zach cited his knowledge as a “child of divorce” but quickly learned there’s a difference between a child of, and an active member of divorce. 

Mick always pokes him for this: Zach always thinks he has a _wealth_ of information about everything in existence. He does sometimes, about the Zimmermann Telegram or Albert Fish or anything far out, but never relationship advice. Never emotional advice, because that’s Mick’s branch of expertise.

Zach’s polite, and Mick’s polite, but Zach can be that cold-jilted-NYC’er-sarcastic, and Mick loves that energy. They talk about everything and everyone, usually the hearths of gossip about Niall’s Tinder or Chris’ friendships in L.A. Mick is jealous of Zach’s fluent intelligence, and Zach’s jealous of Mick’s appearance, so they bond in envy. Mick loves Zach’s understanding of the world around him, and Zach appreciates Mick’s compassion to improve it. They get each other.

When Zach’s phone buzzes twice with a gay anime contact picture and a nickname of “mellow yellow man”, he doesn’t hesitate to accept the call. “Hello?”

“Do you understand how iMovie works? I’m trying to make a thing for my mom but it’s formatted for five-year-olds.”

“What are you making for your mom?” He asks in a stilted, curious tone.

“Dude.” The frustration with iMovie, and now Zach is palpable.

“ _Dude._ Are you finally coming out to her through a slideshow?” A laugh crackles the other end, “Or is it another fuckin’ uh, a t-shirt thing? This time the fans have to do one of those TikTok dances to win a shirt from yours truly?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Very hilarious. No, I’m just helping her make a slideshow thing for her work,” Zach asks himself, _when’s the last time I’ve talked to Mom?_ “You’re awfully comedic today.”

“I thought I was a natural comedian, that’s why people do the funny giggles at me.”

“No, we laugh with you, bum. You came right out of the gate with the ‘you’re gay’’s today. Anything special happen?”

He doesn’t know how to describe that it’s an anxiety coping mechanism he’s had forever in a simple way that won’t make Mick concerned, so he responds, “Nope.” Pause. “Filmed some shit with Lyle and Chris.”

“Oh,” he says, in that awful, saccharine mommy voice he uses when he hears something new, “and anything cool, sexy, terrible happen?”

Zach’s not sure why he says it, but he knows he needs to say it to him. Mick doesn’t need to know about the entire Chris dilemma, but he’s sure that he already does. “I...I had like, a weird...anxiety? thing today, _because_ I, uh, I felt. Jealous. I guess. It’s not jealous, it’s like distant, -cy? I was feeling distancy and it just.” He often hates silence from the other end of the call, but he knows that silence from Mick is comforting, because he knows he’s listening. “...have you- okay you probably haven’t seen it, but he has this new sign in his bathroom.”

“Right.”

“And the sign is just...the most white mom thing ever, I mean pshhaaw.” He realizes that his comedic pauses even leak into his emotional discussions. “It’s cringy, right. And it made me feel bad because I didn’t know he would want something...like that? Y’know?”

There’s a pause from Mick as he waits for any sort of conclusion to what he’s talking about. “...Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“So you,” he exhales, “you didn’t like the sign, so you don’t like his taste? Or him, now?”

“No, well, it’s not that, it’s…” He now realizes that he shouldn’t have mentioned anything. He barely understands it himself and is throwing his tantrum onto Mick for him to figure it all out _for_ him. _I’m a shit friend._ He combs one hand through his hair, theorizing what the best escape strategy is for this call, and decides, “I guess it’s just an age thing. Like it’s been a while since we were screaming on a couch in the ‘Cabin’, but it feels so rapid and far of a change from what he used to be. I don’t know, it’s whatever,”

“I know what you’re talking about.” He responds, booming through the microphone, making him feel like he knows _all_ of his secrets. 

He inhales, “Yo--Yeah?”

“Yes. It’s something I used to feel all the fuckin’ time with my old college friends, especially when everyone started moving,” Zach exhales in comfort, “It definitely _feels_ different. I mean, when everything’s said and done, you are both different people five years down the road. But I think that the Internet has sped _everything_ up in that way.”

“Mhm?” He turns down his TV.

“Back in _the day_ ,” Mick will never not highlight his age like he is approaching sixty years old, “you hung out with one person once. You went for drinks. You called each other, and if you were Benjamin Franklin, you would send someone a letter.”

“But nowadays, we send messages and call people and type every five minutes.”

“Exactly. You met Chris, what, ten years ago?”

He feels weird saying, “more like fifteen.”

“Right. And you first met him on Newgrounds, and you sent messages back and forth, and became friends _that_ way. Which is far more random and open and, y’know, radical, than when you’d just meet one person five blocks away from you and have some sort of access to their number if you needed it.”

“He was across the fuckin’ globe.”

“So, what I’m saying is maybe ruminate with that. Consider it.”

He almost rolls his eyes, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Think back to the good times, kinda. You two are ridiculously close, ingratiated in each other for a decade. I guarantee that there will be even _more_ times where you or Chris will feel stale and weird about the other person you’ve basically grown up with.”

“I’m supposed to just...think about...being his friend? I feel like I’ve been doing that for quite some time.”

“No, man. Go back to your roots. Look at those little, starting texts you had with him. I’m sure they’re fucking terrible and cringe and disgusting. _That’s_ where you find how close you really are. That’s your collective... existence, the weirdness that brought you together.” He senses Zach’s interest, “just try it. Scan your Newgrounds account. Sure you’ll find some weird shit.”

Zach hangs up the phone hastily, not wasting a second of analytical solitude and deliberation inside himself. _He’s right, you know_ comes to mind first, followed by _does Mick really have the right experience to command research like this,_ then _is he really commanding me or is he trying to help,_ concluding with _we became friends_ because _we were weird? It had to be something more than odd DBZ discussions._

He dwells on it. He thinks about the concept of friends for a while, how certain people somehow snap into your heart like Lego bricks and stay put right there for years. Eons. Zach tries to recall the _first_ word he ever heard, or read, from Chris. He wrote to him first, he remembers, a true connoisseur of OneyNG’s earliest works like A Random Day and The Sicksons (which grew from deep love to later critique.) He imagines a conversation like this was probably what happened:

**psychicpebble: hey dude, i’m zach, i luv ur cartoons**

**oneyng: thx :3**

Wait. Did Chris even respond? He knows the :3 somehow plays in. Did he just end sentences with it?

**psychicpebble: hey i love your cartoons**

**psychicpebble: hey**

**psychicpebble: hey**

**psychicpebble: hey wanna collab**

**psychicpebble: hey here’s that animation u should’ve collabed on**

**oneyng: please leave me and my family alone or i’ll have to notify the police :3**

Fuck. He’s not sure whether the beginning was bleak or welcoming. He guesses how they bonded, that maybe being a closer concept.

**psychicpebble: do u know anything about ww2?**

Too nerdy for him to mention to Chris. Chris was a celebrity to him before they were friends, he couldn’t be fucking up his chances with his _intelligence._ Yuck.

**psychicpebble: do u like girls?**

Weirdly gay from the start. Also, what?

**psychicpebble: do u watch dbz?**

**oneyng: no :o but i want 2!**

He puts his head in his hands, mind muddled with the idea that Mick was perhaps right about this. The random anxiety and the getting old-shit, that’s natural. So maybe he shouldn’t be slumped over his couch arm casting gloomy glances at Bob Odenkirk on TV. He thinks about it, drums his fingers on his coffee table, and grasps his phone, typing. 

He remembers his old area code by heart, the way it all tugs at his emotions every time he recalls his parents, the pristine Midwest winters without a car to slosh the snow up. When he calls his mom, he huddles into the corner of the couch, swaddling himself in the warm feeling that erupts from talking to Ms. Hadel. 

He feels like a kid, in some ways. He feels just as annoyed when his mom reminds him of some embarrassing story when he was ten, just as proud when she toots him up about his many animation projects, and just as comfortable listening to the way she elongates her a’s in each word. That makes him feel all the lonelier, knowing that she’s this person only accessible by phone call: this monument of the first twenty years of his life. 

He tells him he’ll be home for Christmas, patiently listens to her newest gossip about the neighbors, and brushes off her mention of church. It’s only when she flips the “howzit these days?” on him that he flusters.

“I. I am doing okay. Y’know, doing a lot of videos on Chris’ channel,”

“Oh I _love_ Chris! How is he doing?” 

He bites back a full thesis over how Chris is doing terribly according to one small laugh and wall art, “He’s good, he’s working on a video game thing right now,” he pauses to move the conversation into more relatable terms for her, “the game’s set in where he used to live and it’s that kind of absurd funny style he’s got. In 3D.”

She laughs, “It seems like only yesterday you were sprinting upstairs every freakin’ dinner to Skype him. Only fair that you two are basically living together nowadays.”

“Yeah, uh,” it falls from his lips far too quickly, “doyoustillhavemystufffrombackthen?”

“Pardon? You’re breaking up.”

“Do youstillhave—“

“Zach? Hello?” He lifts his phone from his ear to see if his wifi is fucking up. It isn’t. He feels like a pervert asking her something like this when it’s not even that terrible an ask. It’s just an experiment, he reasons. Just a little research of old-school emojis and early Internet communication. 

“Hi. Mom. Do you still have my things from, like, those days? Like my old computer, that shi--stuff.”

“Umm, probably,” he exhales in relief, “I don’t think I threw that all away unless Jim touched it.”

“Jim probably took the keyboard keys off to chew on them.”

“Zach!” He heartily chuckles into the phone, that childlike mischief permanent in him. In a way, he yearns to be back at home, running downstairs after she screamed “dinner!” Beats 7/11 every other night. The phone call ends with I-love-yous peppered with millions of promises about coming to visit, coming to see her, coming to see how his apartment is, like one real hug with his mom will make all the stress fall off his bones. 

Tears prick at his eyes the second she hangs up, so he studies the ceiling. He then whips his head left to search the tiny, stupidly small, mouse-house-sized, randomly-placed-in-the-uppermost-left-corner-of-his-living-room window. It lets little droplets of sunset sink through, iotas of oranges and rose bouncing off of his bookshelf. Zach keeps his mind on the window, more entertaining than the TV, drifting.

The call delivered to him in that hasty Amazon box. He now sits in front of the prehistoric Dell computer like it is the Ark of the Covenant. Running one nail across the logo garners far too much dust, and way too many memories. He slides the computer around to admire the terrible plug-ins on the back. How many hours he spent trying to plug cords through the idiotic technological design. Most hours he failed. 

He flips it over and there he sees the Mighty Crack of ‘11: a freak accident (dropping it on the bathroom tile) causing a thematic scar down the middle of the bottom. The Crack brought him great fear and despair that the Dell would betray him, that his animations would be lost forever, but it didn’t, and they weren’t. Kept on running at 30 frames per second like it always did.

Zach opens the laptop and immediately notices the inhumane amount of dust, hair, and general perishables _inside_ the keyboard, embedded in the keys. He’s disgusted by himself. A run to the bathroom grants him a q-tip to salvage the chaos, but the q-tip breaks off into the guck between keys B and N. _Shit._ Luckily the mousepad sorta works (sorta means it needs to recalibrate every two minutes), and luckily, the computer turns on without having to plug it in. He considers it a beautiful omen.

He tests nine different passwords, all consisting of some vague reference to high school he _thinks_ he’d write. But he can’t think of it. And he must’ve fucked up the way he typed his security question, because he’s typed “beagle” into what was the breed of your first dog but it refuses. _You don’t know my fucking dog,_ he sours. Yet that dog is the catalyst of his password. Zach grins. Muscle memory carries him to the tune of “Rexdoggi3490” and his screen opens with a pixelated screenshot of Donkey Kong Country as his background.

His eyes hurt with the fast way they dart all over the screen, remembering every folder and its place, the exact order of Google, Flash, Yahoo on the bottom of the screen, the Steam app flaunted in the middle of the screen like he’s some famous gamer. He cringes at every part, yet coiled deep inside him is a joy to have the chance to see it all. Zach’s first order of business is to obviously check the folders, because what _is_ inside? He wants to stare at the home screen for an hour, but can’t wait to crack open these mysterious files. The first, entitled “coloreds only”, features hundreds of PNGs, random stills of movies or art he ripped from the Internet. 

He finds a PNG, “gooddorandge3”, a screenshot of Jeff’s first Tankmen cartoon. Pride whistles around his heart as he thinks _I took this before I even_ thought _I’d ever meet Jeff. Woah._ Another PNG depicts a still from Eddsworld, another a neon meet’n’fuck game, a dozen pictures of a star or a planet. A random sunset in a neighborhood near his dad’s house that he slightly remembers. A dusty iPhone picture taken of a TV (innovative screenshot technology) playing Mad Men. A still from the Cowboy Bebop movie. A photo he took of a Goodyear sign, glowing an enigmatic red in the darkness of Nebraska at dusk.

He remembers each one, every color like a puzzle piece in his brain completing all of his memories. He doesn’t even need to look at the date of when they were saved, because he knows he was introduced to Cowboy Bebop junior year of high school, or that he was near that neighborhood that one summer before “college” because his mom was moving. It’s all a lullaby to him, a railroad of nostalgia from each historical top-text bottom-text impact-font meme to strange astronomy phases. It leaks into every folder. The next folder he clicks is one that’s called “pretty” and it’s chock full of those same planets and sunsets, colors and intrigues.

Zach almost glazes completely over the folder inside “pretty.” _Um..._ four PNGs of mysterious names appear, and he picks “Homewerk smiley face.” It pulls up an image of a grinning, blonde Czech girl grabbing her tits and he frantically clicks out of it as if his parents are about to catch him. A deep exhale and a look behind his back inspires another look at the picture, and it pokes him with happiness instead of anxiety the second time. He recalls perhaps the exact day he saved this. It was a school day, maybe a Tuesday, and he came home from school itching with hormones. Like any normal boy in the ‘age of the interweb’, he looked for salvation from these emotions in the purest of locations: RedTube and Limewire. 

He remembers distinctly searching up “naked blonde woman” and getting grossed out by the overtly rapey or violent, or awkward revenge-porn videos and pictures. He always had a limit about that type of stuff, no matter how hard his friends would call him vanilla. That day, he protested against the system and instead searched up the same term, with “happy” at the front. He yielded much more jovial results.

He now looks back at an image that must’ve been waiting on his computer patiently for years, begging to be reopened like a backpack from sixth grade. As he had the day he received it, Zach studies each pixel and trades the past horniness for a present smile of reminiscence. _Mona Lisa,_ he thinks, _who’s she smiling at?_ He ponders the photo for a moment before clicking out. He peers at the folder with a million megabytes entitled “work”, and decides to open it another day, to give himself enough time to sort through all of those tiny little sketches and ball animations. 

Zach fixates on the “phone pics'' folder. The images of him, awkward glasses, horrifying Goku cosplay. The joyous images of his high school friends who he can’t seem to remember the names of. His baby photos from his grandma’s scrapbook that have a glare from the camera’s flash. The screenshots of his Skype ex-girlfriend whose lovingly cringy relationship almost slipped entirely out of his memory. The most random things clutter it, images of his first beer, a bad cut he got on his leg, a pot he made in art class, but he holds each memory so tight to his heart that he feels his stomach knotting up. 

He wants to pause, but he can’t stop moving his mouse across each file name and icon. Skype pulls at him, but he leaves that alone as well. The next area of attack has to be his browser: the genesis of his adult life. The first thing that appears on Internet Explorer is a virus notification, and then a hundred bookmarks. He reads over each, and their paired name. He finds that each tab with an inconspicuous name ( _data_ , _the news_ , _weather)_ is a link to a certain RedTube search term or an 18+ Newgrounds drawing, while the other Newgrounds links are correctly named, with certain adjectives following it. He clicks the one that reads “ _Fred Animated Series (Hilarious, Background, Expression)_ ”.

It’s twitchy yet seamless, and carries a weird charm no matter how aged it is. He’s not sure why he mentioned the muddy background, perhaps the blurry effect on it that was new at the time. Zach grins at the hands, realizing Chris only learned how to draw hands around the time they became friends. When the movie ends with a tiny credit “Dedicated to all you Fred fans out there”, he feels like Chris dedicated the video, the art, this journey, to him. He knows it’s time to begin whatever journey he was set upon by Mick. He scrolls to the top and clicks the orange Login button.

He forgot his password. Again. Of course he forgets his password. He panics for a moment before _Oh you dumbass. It’s the same account you’ve been using for years._ He inhales when he types in psychicpebbles followed by passwordhahaha34, and exhales when the home screen opens up. It’s that same black screen on the same laptop opened on that same account. He takes a moment to stare at every part of the screen. Maybe looking hard enough will push him back into 2008.

There’s hundreds of notifications built up from the years of not opening the tab. He scrolls through a few, some newer animations from artists he doesn’t recognize the names of, some updates on the website, et cetera. He gasps at his awful reviews near the start of his account, particularly the one where he goes feral on some dumb game _right_ on Christmas Eve 2011. Admiring his old profile makes him want to change his even older profile picture, and he tells himself to fix it later. Right now he needs to look at the messages. Find where it started. Where all of this horrifying friendship life partner bullshit began. He clicks that mail icon, the last arrow on his list of private messages, and finds it. 

**October 24 2008**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: Animation Buddies?**

_Dear God._ He leans back in his chair to immerse himself.

**Hi chris ! :D Im zach (as in zachary or zachariah XD) and I luv ur anim8tions, ur hilarious. I ROFLd @ sicksons for like a whole month. Im trying to be an animator, havent made that much tho as u can see :P I guess im new in town haha I do have sum stuff ive been working on if u want me 2 send! Anyway, hope we can be friends and all that gay shizzzzzz. bai !**

**Z.**

He closes his eyes after one read, and doesn’t finish reading it the second time. The sheer anxiety in each emoji makes him squeal, knowing he could’ve easily been a part of those cringe compilations he watches nowadays. The panic at not having any work done and the neediness for Chris to notice him makes him wither. If only 18-year old Zach knew that those parts don’t leave in you. He sighs, thinking _Who the hell is Z?_ Was this his way of acting cool to Chris? His odd signature? He looks for Chris’ response, but only sees himself replying to the original.

**November 12 2008**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: Re: Animation Buddies?**

**Hey chris, I wrote u b4 but maybe this got buried by all ur other emails. U r super famous, lol ! 1 of my friends told me u live in ireland, that’s super kewl. I live in bumass nebraska rn. Currently making an anim 4 a like mario-halo-batman kinda thing, here’s a taste :0 maybe u could send me some tips?? Ik the background is absolute shit but like…how key frame?! Hahaha alrite have a good day man bai ! :D**

**attached: mariodiefunnyscreamfall.mp4**

**Z.**

He can’t tell what’s worse, each painful “hahaha” and “bai”, or his weird touchiness about Chris’ popularity. This is not the last one, but the second to last reply before Chris even glanced at his emails.

**November 21 2008**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: Re: Re: Animation Buddies?**

**Helloooo. Sry if im like super insistent I just wanna be friends ahaha. That kinda sounds like what john wayne gacy said to the kids before he brutally raped them or whatever idk. I just remember he had a cool costume. :P Hope everythings cool, still workin on my anim. Oh btw happy bday!! :3 What r u 13? Idk timezones or whatever but hopefully u see this in time. Bai !**

**Z.**

He looks down at a much shorter message.

**November 22 2008**

**To: Psychicpebbles**

**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Animation Buddies?**

**Hi zachariah, ty for ur bday wishes. No one else noticed lol. I liked ur anim :3 just make sure to keep ur anatomy in order, like when Mario is running u have to make shure his torso is the right size. Unless thats like ur style XD sry im so bad at critique. Lmfao at when Mario fell, that was so gud :)**

**CHRIS. or C. WHATEVER’S COOLEST. ROFL.**

He feels his heart drop into his stomach, splitting him into a million tiny pieces as his face heats up. It’s almost as if he’s reading this message for the first time. Like he’s never met Chris O’Neill ever before, this pillar of internet animation _celebrity_ , and suddenly he responds to his dumb little messages. Laughing at his animation! The high of that feeling makes his eyes skim completely over the sarcastic remarks written in between the lines. Butterflies slip under each rib.

He doesn’t jump but he leaps onto his bed, rolling onto his back and gazing at his cracked ceiling. Mick was right. Mick was right! This is all just dumb petty shit, because look how great it feels to hear shit like this! All he needs to do is think about this one message, and he’ll zoom back to a place in time where even looking at a _text_ from Chris was like winning gold in an Olympic bobsled competition. It’s all fixed. He’ll talk to Chris tomorrow, and we’ll be like this again. Tight.

Zach’s eyes fall back over to that old computer, focusing on that fluorescent screen illuminating the messages that follow that one email. And as he drifts asleep, he begins to realize that he needs to read a whole lot more than one little message. 


	2. the second wind

Chris picks up the phone and Zach isn’t sure what to say. Mostly because he didn’t think Chris would answer, but also because this idea was far too spontaneous for him to scheme out a conversation like he always does.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Chris. I have a proposition for you.”

“It’s 9 PM.” 

“Yes! And what better time for,” he looks at the clock on his computer. Shit. It really was that late. Working on projects on bright screens inside has ruined any sense of time, “ _eating._ Out. At a diner.”

There’s a pause. He’s definitely formulating a way to politely say no. Zach thinks of the best way to brush off the conversation entirely until he hears a tentative “sure” on the other line.

“Really?” He asks, maybe asking himself the question more than Chris.

“Yeah. Lemme...what’s the address of the place? Is it that one by the PetSmart?”

He doesn’t even know a diner. Why the fuck did he option a diner? They could’ve gone to that nice Thai place instead of some dingy building, “Yep, that one. Let’s meet at like, 9:30.”

“‘Kay. See you then.” Zach looks down at his phone and the thought of _I am a god of persuasion_ slips through his mind. _The mere strength of my mind powers._ And then the crippling self-doubt settles into his head, so much so that he has to stand up and shake it off. He designates that pain to little distracting tasks, a consistent shake to his brain so it all doesn’t overwhelm him. He has to get ready for Chris, of course. 

He clears the junk food trash off of his coffee table and walks to his dresser, deciding to switch out his faded Phillies sweatshirt for something more chic. A button-down and a black tee with the original words New York embroidered on. Zach can’t help but judge: button-down says we’re on a date and we’ll get weird looks from the waiter, “New York” brings up unsolved-friend-shit that we should never speak about. He gets frustrated and instead leaves for the bathroom. He’ll always condemn his detailed obsession with appearance. Good for designing cartoons, terrible when Cory wore a neon green t-shirt with yellow sweatpants for three days straight.

He brushes his teeth with the ferocity of a man who can’t afford a high dentist bill, and gives a once-over to his stubble in the mirror. While looking in that mirror, his brain badgers him. _He’s probably only going because he wants you to leave him alone._ Fuck. Maybe his conscience is right. Why is he doing this? Why is he getting all dolled up just to be let down by the same person he’s been hurt by so many times before?

From that comes a softer thought: _how has he hurt you?_ Dwelling on that would be the equivalent of ripping out teeth, so he instead slips some jeans over his pasty legs, grabs his keys, and gets to his car. _This is an adventure,_ he muses. _Be happy. Go fucking nuts. Don’t be blegh if you don’t want him to be blegh._ The car moves faster powered by the speed of subtlety motivational self-judgement. The PetSmart glares like the Eiffel Tower in the little urban strip mall.

The diner is what he expected: ripped 50s aesthetic, small windows with the checker print everywhere, red plastic booths that attract crumbs, and employees who are too old for this shit -- and will let you know by their sassy manner --- but keep at it. Zach gets a table, and a look from the waitress, as he says two waters, he’s waiting for a friend.

“Alright, will it all be on one tab?”

He says it just a bit too loud, “Yes. Totally. Thank you, Anne.” His insides curl up the second she turns her back. _What the fuck...you’re not supposed to lovingly shout the name of a waitress you do not know..._ Chewing on his straw is the only way to rid himself of the violent cringe he’s experiencing. He’s slumped over the table like a middle-aged divorcee. Artificial light beams down on his crestfallen pose.

“You okay?” It’s Chris, desperately hiding a huge giggle at his friend’s disparaged state. Chris, with the tall yet chubby frame that no one else could pull off. Chris, who is wearing the same Hot Topic shirt he’s had since he was 15. Chris, who makes it look good somehow. He’s also wearing a smile that suggests no internal rage at Zach, so maybe this is a good sign.

“Oh, you know. Hard work at the factory, the wife’s whoring out her WAP to the neighbor, my son’s probably gay -- normal _man_ things,” he delivers this in a booming Transatlantic voice, turning the head of an older woman in a booth next to them. Chris chuckles and sits down, wiping the laminate and looking down at the vibrant menu, “if it’s alright with you, I’ve already ordered nine of those hamburger meals for our table.”

“The meat’s literally sweating in the photo, Zach.”

“Exactly, so I thought, ‘Mmmmm. Nothing Chris loves more than sweat,’” Anne places down Chris’ water, “Y’know. Because of your hyperhidrosis and all.” She stalks away, assuming they are occupied.

“I do not. I just sweated a _lot_ that one time at the house,” he sips the cup filled with too much ice, “and at that gym in Philadelphia, but that was because I didn’t drink any fuckin’ water.”

“Remember when Niall made up this whole challenge to not drink anything for like, a week? He said it was to refine his senses?”

“Oh my god, and didn’t he--”

“He didn’t shit for _two_ months. Point blank. Like we had to start keeping tabs on when he went to the bathroom because we didn’t want him to die.”

“We had so many shit problems back then.”

“I’d like to think it was Stamper, he liked butt stuff _so much_ that it cursed all of our anuses,” the two burst into laughter, Zach louder after Chris, and Chris covers Zach’s loudmouth to prevent another dirty look from the old lady in the booth. 

“Dumbass, you’re gonna get us kicked out!”

“What of it, if I cannot entertain my dear Christian Weston O’Neill throughout nightfall?” He chuckles and shrugs at it. The nervous blush on Zach’s cheeks prompts another distracting outburst, “Do you ever feel bad that your initials are C.O.?”

“No?”

“Okay.”

He grins, “that’s it?”

“I’ve got plenty more jokes, that was just a little test,” the waitress comes back over and takes their respective orders. A moment of silence passes as Chris sips his drink, “A treat, if you will.”

They continue like this for the whole hour it takes for their food to get to the table, a microscopic tennis-match of Zach squeaking and joking and talking in the animated way he does, while Chris softly listens and smiles and nods, jutting in with the little suggestions and questions that feed Zach’s little energy. His grinning at Zach only slightens when he starts to go on a tirade about obscure American presidential elections -- but the dynamic lasts as long as it always has.

Zach ordered spaghetti for some unearthly reason, smiling and deeply thanking Anne for her excellent service. Chris ordered a sandwich, and chews calmly on the fries. Zach can’t have that peace.

“Friendo, would you like some reddit gold?” He grabs the ketchup bottle in its cubby.

“Sure, man,” He says, not ‘please cover my entire fucking plate with tomato juices.’ The other writhes in laughter while squeezing the dear life out of the bottle, not pausing at Chris’ distressed expression. He has to bat him away from his dish through tears -- ketchup hits the table in the skirmish -- and the two turn their heads into their personal corners of hysteria. Zach keeps his eyes on him, stuttering into a new joke as Chris interrupts him.

“Oh my god dude...shut up.”

“What’s wrong, ex dee bro? Something not humorous?”

“No, you’re just so…” He glints at the ruined plate, pushing his tongue into his bottom lip, “spunky, tonight. Very much a Rob Schneider.”

“Aw, wow babe.”

“That! That there! Shut up with that!” He looks up like he’s been caught red-handed but just as quickly changes his expression to a grin, “You’re being a little...a little entertainer tonight. I feel like you planned this, or something.”

Zach replies, “What’s wrong with being the little entertainer?”

“Nothin’, it’s just...it’s New Zach. Neo-Zach. Adult Swim pilot Za--”

“Shut up,” he murmurs, ducking his head back into his cold spaghetti. The watery marinara sauce brings him back to those days in PA where they’d all just congregate in the living room waiting for Stamper to cook them dinner. It’d be an everyday occurrence, and he never caught on to it until Jeff pointed it out in a podcast. He imagines the three of them, Cory and Chris, or Niall too and Stamper’s girlfriend, all watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the heater on 80. Philadelphia winters were always shit, but a domestic shit.

He’d always trip over his words back then. Maybe it was the attention that made his lips slip, but he’d never be able to get a word in edgewise, a stammering wreck in any argument with Stamper. He recalls a specific disagreement over a spaghetti recipe:

“Motherfucker! The instructions obviously fucking say put the water in once the pasta is cooked!!”

“But, _but_ motherfuck-er. It says, right, _right_ fuckin’ here that the fuckin’, the sauce like, coagulates with the tomatoes!

“Coagulates? Get your weird-ass Harvard vocabulary out of here! You ruined fuckin’ dinner, Zach!!” Stamper screams, dissolving into laughs, “You look so mad right now.”

“I’m not mad, _you’re_ wrong. And everyone is going to _love_ the pasta sauce that, that I _wonderfully_ crafted for us all.”

“Fine.”

The pasta sauce sucked ass. But, being that shining star of the argument, the loudmouth, the person who was there to express a strong-ass opinion: he fell in love with it. That house taught him how to love his voice being out there (and also to not leave beer cans open because cockroaches haunted each bedroom.)

Now, he zones out while twirling his pasta with a fork. He thinks about what Chris thought about that pasta sauce. _Maybe it’s mentioned on Skype around that time, or something..._

Chris snaps in front of his face, “Hey.” He leaps out of the spaghetti haze and looks at the other, “I _like_ Neo-Zach. Don’t...don’t do your depression eyes thing because I called you funny.”

He feels far too flattered to spit out anything but, “Aww, babe, T.Y. heart heart.” The other kicks his ankle, smiling at Zach’s dramatic and devastated expression. He fills the rest of the night with sparky, doting comments asking questions about frankly nothing: parents, if he’s talked to Stamper, what shows he’s seen recently, shit that wouldn’t fully matter to him if Chris wasn’t the one answering.

The old diner is a home built just for them. The windows built for their conversations about gay types of cars driving outside, the menus drawn and typed for pointed commentary about the color chartreuse, and the chairs structured just close enough for their knees to meet at a perfect footsie angle. Zach doesn’t remember the dilemma he had yesterday. And the dinner, the bill speed by them too quickly, too apt for a night of spontaneity. Yet, their knees stay pressed together like nothing will change at all. 

He realizes that nothing did. He comes to this conclusion in his car -- alone, though that’s perhaps a false representation of the smile that sticks to his face like Chris is there. He squeezes the steering wheel and drives in silence. The smiling couldn’t be fake, nor the talkativeness, nor the...random call-outs about his change in character. It was genuine. He was there, on time, and participated. How on earth did he ever misjudge his best friend like this? A cosmic error. A little slip-up. 

Neo-Zach makes him tighten his grip.

Of _course_ he’s changed! Why else would Chris denote it in the fucking conversation? It’s not _bad_ that he has a friend who thinks he has become a different person. He thinks the same thing about Chris, so it’s okay now. It’s okay, to be searching for those same new differences in his counterpart. It’s alright to be intrigued by your friend in every part of their adult (?) transformation. 

Perhaps he dotes on that idea too much. The idea tucks him into bed (at 2 AM, the two overstayed their welcome) and wakes him up, only dissipating when he gets ready for the gym. The gym’s always been more of a metaphorical thing for him, but Tomar and Mick inspire him to move his ass, at least a little bit. This morning, he wobbles through the place in a daze. A pat on Mick’s shoulder, a high-five ( _or low-five haha_ ) to Tomar. He changes into his gym clothes in the locker room, and that’s about all the activity he sees happening for himself today. Zach waves at Tomar every time he makes a lap around the entire facility; he gets stopped at four.

“Everything okay, Zach?”

He watches someone shoot a shitty look at someone working out, “What? Oh, yeah.”

“Um. Are you sure?” Tomar’s warm eyes make him not want to bullshit anyone ever again, but still he perseveres.

“I’m fine,” _why am I such a social freak,_ “Think I’m just kinda tired. Haha.” _You asshole, you got Tomar worried._ Tomar smiles at him sympathetically and turns back to whatever machine he was on before. Meanwhile, Zach screws his eyes shut. His heart’s beating wildly for no discernible reason besides being around 2+ people, and the thought to rush home washes over him. Maybe he’s a shitty person for that, considering all those little exits to the room. No matter, because he gives his friends a quick bye that suggests business: one that’s a fib.

A fib to get out of class. Out of gym, of all things! He remembers, it was the only class he felt morally sound in leaving early. Those early mornings with the tiny shorts and the cold air and the wet grass and the cantankerous sixty-year old. What was his name? Fuck, it had to be Coach-something. The bickering over the details breaks his mind from considering the hangover-like state he’s in.

He wouldn’t say he _watches_ his phone for notifications while he’s working; that would be invariably unproductive. Zach, more or less, multi-tasks by splitting his attention on drawing _and_ waits for his phone screen to blink. It’s sitting there, presenting itself to him, attracting him in. He doesn’t get distracted very easily, just disorganized. Disorganization breathes itself into the bedraggled state of his apartment (the Amazon box firmly nested on his kitchen counter), and his working schedule.

It’s early morning in Australia, so Zach can’t question/joke/complain to Michael about the storyboard he’s working on. What’s wrong with it? Basically everything, the lack of a punchline, the dusty-colored backgrounds, the stilted movements...he arches his back to crack it, and yet again considers texting someone. Calling Tomar to apologize about leaving, calling Mick to update him on the (Chrach? Zahris?) situation, Cory to...?

He calls Lyle. Is spontaneity not one of the core values of being a successful adult? And, he craves to figure out whatever new fun story Lyle possesses.

“Zach?”

“Hello, Mr. McDouchebag.”

“Isn’t it your bedtime right now?” He’s not sure if he asks this as a joke about his insomnia or how tired he sounds on the phone. Both.

“I mean, probably. I stayed up far past bedtime last night, like fuggin’...4 AM. Sucks ass,”

“Some deadline?”

“No, just a late-night with Chris,” _Shit, I did not invite him._

“Oh, _ohhh._ Secret love meetings, I get it. Y’know _I_ want to also kiss all of my male-friends when the lights are low,” Zach’s emotions conjunct between amusement and embarrassment.

“Fuck you, Lyle,” he chuckles on the other side, “God, why did I even call you.”

“I don’t know. Were you expecting me to say something like, really brilliant to bring your hopes up?”

“Uhm, sure,” he replies, pacing his apartment like the work will get itself done.

“Give me like three seconds,” Zach pads into his room and sits at his desk while Lyle types rapidly. He gives that silver DELL symbol an absent glance, “Okay, okay. ‘Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.’”

“That is _so_ the first result of ‘inspirational quotes’.”

“Well yeah, but aren’t you inspired,” he thinks over the words again, “just a little bit?”

“I’m so fucking inspired Lyle that I’m literally about to like, act as if I make a difference in this world.”

“Well, I’m sure William James is proud of you.”

Perhaps a Lyle call wasn’t that bad of a decision. The conversation dribbles out with Lyle saying he’s off to go ‘proliferate radical ideologies’, but Zach stays inspired by the communication. He wants to go down his whole contact list and call every name -- would Jeff pick up? He then leans away from it all, realizing he would just make everybody uncomfortable.

Would Chris pick up?

No, that’s weird. They hung out a few hours ago, they’re best friends so they don’t need to constantly talk, blahblah. But...yes? He’s his friend, his _best_ friend, why would there need to be some sort of deliberation over it? It prompts a spin in his chair, just to move his brain about a little. Like one rotation will change the axis of his dumb brain chemistry.

He doesn’t call Chris. The silence of the empty room and the slow heartbeat in his chest bubbles into a stressful nothingness: do something Zach, be someone Zach, make a difference Zach. The old computer stares back at him. Its eyes are dark, wide-open like he’s forced to look in. Zach submits and opens it up again.

**November 23 2008**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: Re: Re: Animation Buddies?**

**Omg :D I feel like ive been emailed by god himself**

Did he ever pause one moment in these emails to stop sucking Chris’ dick? Jesus christ.

**Yup i totally argee w what u said, its 2 rigid :/ prolly bc im a terrible artist, i watch so many tutorials and shit of other artists 2 see if i get better but it doesnt work most of th time, like if i watch a thousand videos of some indian dude using flash im gonna become the indian dude, its this whole thing idk :L Its so crazy how liek some ppl just r born w these incredible ideas like u r, or like egoraptor or spazkid. U guys r just too brilliant for the average plebeian xD**

He grimaces. The wild insecurity of his youth (and his present) slipped his mind, but immortalized in these little messages. His first reply to Chris was a power struggle, a pointed attempt at minimizing himself to fit in the huge cardboard cutout of Oney N.G. The cock-sucking _is_ funnier in the context of everyone’s present careers, though.

The message continues with fanciful words that hype up Chris’ talent and denigrate Zach’s, and he scrolls to the next message.

**November 23 2008**

**To: Psychicpebble**

**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Animation Buddies?**

**Haha thank u so much :] i wouldnt say those things about u!! U seem pretty talented from what i saw, ur just starting out. Dont be hating on urself b4 u even get out there, its sumthing the** **_one_ ** **teacher i like taught me in school. I used 2 be so bleghhh about even drawing bc id just draw and draw and NOTHING looked right :/, like when i drew girls i did not understand how to draw anything but a square LMFAO!**

**Butttttttt it only took one teacher to actually tell me “hey ur drawings r actually ok” 4 me to start taking art srsly. Ik, so simple but its tru!! :D maybee u just need someone to say stuff like that to u, my friends and gf usually r my support,**

This almost strikes Zach as...false? It seems too shallow in comparison to the Chris he later met. When Chris was stressed and ridden with headaches at the old house, he was unable to listen to any sort of motivation from him or Cory. Decreased to a mound of nothingness on the couch watching old movies. The only thing that ever salvaged him from a major burnout was Zach bringing him coffee every morning--a tiny routine just for Chris to realize that he’s worth something, even if it’s a cappuccino.

It’s ironic that he points out Zach’s support as being a friend or girlfriend, when that’s what Chris eventually became, to this day. His friend. His emotional help for so many years.

Conversations ebb and flow, and a visible confidence initializes once his online hero displays that he, at least, is interested in some element of Zach. It could’ve been anything, from the excellent emoji usage to the constant deification, yet it warms his dark little heart. Chris believed in him even in his cringiest phases.

**January 12 2009**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: lololololololololool**

**Dude lol i just found the funniest meme about obama here u go XD ik u said u go to college? Idk how different European (gross) college is from American (cool) college, but do u suggest it :P Im no donald trump with my money**

Zach winces.

**but i have enough to idk, at least attend an in-state univ? I just dont know :-\ I think if I keep doing this animation shit i could maybe survive the winter lol but i have no idea if its sustainable to just..live off of it. Isnt it scary? Like ur hanging onto the small crack in the wall of the art world trying to make ppl view your shit...idk idk, inb4 ‘ur soooooo talented!11’**

Reading this chips at his heart. He wants to reach out to past-him just to murmur, ‘yes, you can, yes, you will, yes, you’ll be okay.’ That nervousness about the animation industry is innate in him everyday, but he can distinctly remember how tough it was to live with when he was younger. How tough it was to push that pessimistic voice from the back of his head, and replace it with one of productivity. Perhaps that pessimistic voice is needed sometimes, just to stay sane about the wild conditions of his job.

Chris responds with a description of how shitty his college was -- the uniforms were made of straw (cloth?) and you could see everyone’s dick -- but encourages Zach to at least apply to a college. A fall-back plan, he calls it, assuming that he would choose animation as his main thing. At the time he said this, his account didn’t even have that much clout, so it’s weird he assumed it was viable for him.

His eyes scroll through the hundreds of messages, the Re:’s and dated jokes, until he runs into an adorable inkling that changed his decade.

**June 27 2009**

**To: Oney**

**Subject: small ting**

**Sorry its hella fucking late rn but i couldnt get it out of my head, have u ever noticed that everything on ng is about hell and shit?? like leo and satan, eddsworld sometiems, everything is a weird hell dynamic. :0 And im not complaining ab it but like...cant it b funny?? Why r there never any hell things of two fucking morons walking thru the gates of hell together?/ :P sorry again lol didnt mean to diss ur gay cartoon**

**June 27 2009**

**To: Psychicpebble**

**Subject: Re: small ting**

**Lmao dont worry abt it :D its like day time where i am rn. Thats so weird loll ive never thought about that. Maybe could be our collab :3**

  
_Totally, man. Maybe it could be._ He shuts the laptop to decompress, and drops the confused, white-knuckled hand grabbing his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeyyyy guys!! dang ole chapter 2! this one i tried to really lean into the dialogue heaviness and texting/emailing shid, and i hope it's palatable lmao. i think i need to improve with how i transition description into speaking but im hoping thats not too obviously an achilles heel while ur reading this?? anyhoo. school has kinda succ'd recently but i had a REALLY amazing really lucky day yesterday and i just felt like it's the perfect time to release this bad boy. i'm working on the next one as you read this note and i'm expecting it to be out sooner than in a month!!!! have a great day and stay safe y'all!


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